Tag Archives: London counselling CPD

I first became aware of Pink Therapy when Dominic came to the University of Nottingham to do a talk as part of my degree studies. I was very fortunate that my course included some training on working with gender, sexuality and relationship diversity [GSRD] clients. This sparked my interest in attending further trainings provided by Pink Therapy, as I felt that it was important for me to expand my knowledge in this area. I had a wonderful experience attending the international summer school in 2013, and really valued the experience brought by the trainers and my course peers from all around the world. I remember thinking, it was such a unique experience to share the learning in an environment where I felt I really belonged, and wasn’t in the minority for once!

When I had the chance in 2015 to attend the two year Post-Graduate Diploma in Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversity, I jumped at the chance, as I knew the quality of trainers that are involved in all Pink Therapy training. I found the course to be fantastic, and it covered all aspects of issues that may arise when working with GSRD clients. The overall support provided by the faculty was incredible, and I feel very honoured to have been in the first cohort of students, to complete the mostly online training. I wouldn’t hesitate doing it all over again, and the residential week was a truly empowering experience. I now approach my work with GSRD clients with a renewed competence, and am even mentoring/ supervising some of the current Pink Therapy students!

I am a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist from Finland. When I attended the summer school back in 2013 I was on my third year of my (four years) Training of cognitive-integrative psychotherapy. I learned so much, something that was not included at all in my own psychotherapy training! After the summer school I started writing my diploma work ”GSRD therapy in cognitive-integrative psychotherapy”. Based on this text, I later expanded it into a booklet which was (and still is) the only one written in Finnish language on this very topic. It has been so rewarding to hear from clinicians that the booklet has been helpful and they have learned a lot from it. After the Training ofcognitive-integrative psychotherapy I took a one year Training of couples therapy and wrote another diploma work: ”GSRD therapy in couples and relationships psychotherapy”.

Together with the booklet I introduced seminars intended for psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists and started running these basically around the country. Not only private clinicians have been interested but also the public healthcare sector organizations. For example, next spring I am one of the invited speakers in a seminar organized by Helsinki university hospital. I am also trying to make the organizers of Finnish psychotherapy trainings interested in making GSRDT topics part of the four year psychotherapy training programmes organized in this country – just one day would be great! In the spring of 2019 it is going to happen the first time when my seminar day will be part of Solution-focused therapytraining. I am so excited about this! Earlier, my seminar day was already a part of a couples therapy training organized in my hometown Turku.

At the moment I am taking a 2,5 years Training of trainer and supervisor of cognitive-integrative psychotherapy, which means that after this I can lead psychotherapy trainings organized by the Finnish universities. Yet another diploma work, including research, is on the way – you can guess the topic! After this training I can have so much more influence in what is included in psychotherapy trainings offered.

What I learned in the 2013 summer school has of course given me so much as a clinician and helped me to be a better, more skilful psychotherapist. I can also remember the summer as a period of deep personal growth, figuring out who am I as a psychotherapist and what it means to be a gay psychotherapist. Naturally, these are questions I have also worked through in my own personal psychotherapy, am still doing that, and most probably always will in my own mind. After all, it is a never ending journey! Without all that I learned in the summer school and the process it started in my mind, I think I would never have made it this far, would not have been able to learn so much about myself, too! And most importantly, without the summer shool’s teachings, I clearly would have been less helpful for my patients.